When I Wrote It, Only God and I Knew the Meaning; Now God Alone Knows
Not Hegel — a travelling anecdote with no established authorAnonymous (a travelling anecdote)In print by 1826 · retold of at least six different thinkers
This is a joke that moved from name to name for most of a century, not a line anybody is documented as saying. Its earliest known appearance, in The Morning Chronicle of 9 August 1826, tells it of the German novelist Jean Paul Richter, who had died the previous November. It was later retold of Jakob Böhme, Fichte, Hegel, Klopstock and Robert Browning. The earliest telling about Hegel that Quote Investigator located — John Fiske, in 1875 — dismissed it as a myth in the very footnote that records it.
“When I Wrote It, Only God and I Knew the Meaning; Now God Alone Knows” Not Hegel. A travelling anecdote in print by 1826, then told of Richter, Böhme, Fichte, Hegel, Klopstock and Browning in turn. Traced by Quotle.info · Verbatim: “My good friend, when I wrote that passage, God and I knew what it meant. It is possible that God knows it still; but as for me, I have totally forgotten.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to G. W. F. Hegel. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the themes of knowledge, truth and humility. Theme: "When I Wrote It, Only God and I Knew the Meaning; Now God Alone Knows". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "When I Wrote It, Only God and I Knew the Meaning; Now God Alone Knows". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The anecdote, and where it actually comes from
Earliest known appearance
The Morning Chronicle, London, 9 August 1826
Told of, in 1826
Jean Paul Richter (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763–1825)
Earliest Hegel version located
John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874–75), vol. 1, p. 120, footnote
Verdict
Disputed — a floating anecdote, fictional in every version
The story is current that on being asked to explain some difficult passage written years before, the great metaphysician gave it up in despair, saying: “When I wrote that passage, there were two who understood it, — God and myself. Now, alas, God alone understands it!” A myth, no doubt, but crudely characteristic, like most myths.
John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 120 (footnote)
This is the Hegel version in full, and it is worth reading to the end: the sentence that first pinned the joke on Hegel also calls it a myth. The title-case wording at the top of this page is the form the saying is searched under, and the title Quote Investigator gives its article on it; it transcribes no period source.
We read Fiske’s footnote ourselves rather than taking it second-hand. In the scanned London Macmillan printing of Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, volume 1, the footnote on page 120 carries the Hegel version and ends “A myth, no doubt, but crudely characteristic, like most myths” — see the scan at the Internet Archive.
Quote Investigator dates the earliest instance to The Morning Chronicle (London) of 9 August 1826, where it is told of Jean Paul Richter and the punchline runs “when I wrote that passage, God and I knew what it meant. It is possible that God knows it still; but as for me, I have totally forgotten.”
The same investigation records the joke being reassigned down the century — to Jakob Böhme in 1857, to Fichte by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1869, to Hegel by Fiske in 1875, to Klopstock in 1891 — and reaching Browning by 1890, in the wording closest to the popular one: “When I wrote it, only God and I knew; now God alone knows!” Quote Investigator’s conclusion is that every version was fictional, each beginning to circulate only after its subject had died.
Richter was a real and plausible first target: Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, who wrote as Jean Paul, died on 14 November 1825 — nine months before the 1826 telling — and was famous for difficulty. That he died first is the pattern, not the exception.
✓Public domain
Every documented wording of this anecdote is a 19th-century one — the 1826 Morning Chronicle item and Fiske’s 1874–75 footnote among them — and so is long in the public domain in the United States. One later version is not: the exchange in Rudolf Besier’s play The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930) is a separate copyrighted work, and nothing on this page is quoted from it.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Who it has been pinned on
This is one of the most widely travelled anecdotes in intellectual history. Quote Investigator documents it being retold of at least six different men, in roughly this order — and in each case the telling appears only after the subject is safely dead.
✕
The popular modern creditG. W. F. Hegel Refuted
The earliest telling about Hegel that Quote Investigator located is John Fiske’s 1874–75 footnote, which calls it “a myth, no doubt” in the same sentence. Hegel died in 1831, more than forty years earlier. Read the footnote.
✕
The earliest documented targetJean Paul Richter Earliest telling, still not a quotation
The 1826 Morning Chronicle version is the oldest known, but it too is an anecdote told about a man who had died the year before, and Quote Investigator judges it fictional as well.
~
The version closest to the popular wordingRobert Browning Context, not origin
By 1890 the joke had been fitted to Browning and his notoriously impenetrable Sordello, in the form “When I wrote it, only God and I knew; now God alone knows!” G. K. Chesterton retold it in 1903 and labelled it “probably apocryphal”; Mark Twain had already copied a version into a notebook in 1896.
✕
Also creditedJakob Böhme, J. G. Fichte and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock Refuted
The same joke appears of Böhme in 1857, of Fichte in an 1869 newspaper article by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and of Klopstock in 1891 — which is the clearest sign that the story attaches to a reputation for obscurity, not to a person.
✓There is no original speaker to find. Quote Investigator hypothesises that each of these tales was fictional — a joke about unreadable writing that was simply refitted to whichever difficult thinker had most recently died.
Context
Why it keeps getting retold
The joke works on one reliable fact: some writers really are very hard to read, and their admirers know it. Every name it has been pinned on — Richter, Böhme, Fichte, Hegel, Klopstock, Browning — was famous for difficulty, which is why the story fits each of them so comfortably and proves nothing about any of them.
What makes it durable rather than merely funny is the shape: a devoted reader asks the master what he meant, and the master cannot say. It is a joke about the limits of authorship, which is why it has outlived every individual version of itself.
Each telling appears only once its subject can no longer be asked.
Read the full story
The version most people have actually encountered is a stage line. Rudolf Besier’s play The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930) gave it to Browning in Act 1, Scene 2 — “when that passage was written only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now, only God understands it” — and the play was later made into two films and a television series.
The detective work here is not new. In 1952 the journal Modern Language Notes published a short article by W. P. Bowman that recognised the gag in Besier’s play and traced it back to 1827; Quote Investigator later found the 1826 telling that precedes it.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
You’re skipping our source pages — these links now open the source directly. Show them again
The author
About this anecdote
TA
Anonymous — a travelling anecdote
In print by 1826 · retold of Richter, Böhme, Fichte, Hegel, Klopstock and Browning
No author has ever been established for this joke, and the evidence suggests there is none to find. It surfaces in a London newspaper in 1826, told of the German novelist Jean Paul Richter, and is then refitted to one difficult thinker after another for the next sixty-five years — always, as Quote Investigator notes, after the man in question has died. Writers as careful as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain and G. K. Chesterton all recorded a version; Chesterton and John Fiske both flagged theirs as apocryphal. It belongs to the anonymous joke tradition, not to a person.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The earliest documented appearance (Chicago)
“The Works of John Paul Richter.” The Morning Chronicle (London), 9 August 1826, p. 3. Earliest instance located by Quote Investigator. For the Hegel version, see John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1874), 1:120n.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When I Wrote It, Only God and I Knew the Meaning; Now God Alone Knows’?” Last verified 12 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-i-wrote-it-only-god-and-i-knew-the-meaning-now-god/